There is just one thing I want to say to Mike Huckabee

and then i will be on my way:

If indeed God exists, then God IS in the schools. What is not in the schools is your church. And that is as it should be.

I don't know if I count as a "person of faith." My belief in the existence of God is day to day. Nevertheless, I was raised Catholic, and go to church, and am having actually a surprising number of conversations with my daughter about God these days, and when I see someone like Mike Huckabee trotting this "God did this to punish us for abandoning Him" bullshit out, all I can say is: to say that God is not in our schools just because public schools do not coerce our children into praying to God in language of which you approve is not only an insult to our children and their teachers, but an insult to God. And when you say that this putative absence of God from our schools is responsible for the mass-murder of 20 children and 6 of their teachers and administrators, that goes way past insulting, offensive, or any of the other terms we normally use to describe an asinine public comment from an asinine elected official.

Because if God exists, then God has to be bigger than your petty political bullshit. If an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God exists, then God cannot possibly be bound by your tiny-hearted rules or your tunnel vision. If such a God exists, then neither you nor I can tell that God where to be or what to do or who to bless.

If such a God exists, that God would not slaughter twenty children out of some kind of generalized anger or nonsensical logic. That is the kind of thing human beings do.

If God exists, then God is with and in our children and their teachers, whether or not they are saying what you think they should be saying, whether or not they believe what you believe. If God exists, then God is with us at the worst and darkest times of our lives--not to miraculously intervene and save the innocent from evil, because clearly in this world that does not happen, but to love and sustain and bear witness to the suffering of those who are beyond the reach of human help and comfort. If God exists, then God was with and in the children in those classrooms at Sandy Hook, with and in those who lived and with those who died. If God exists, then God was with and in the adults who risked and gave their lives for those children. If God exists, then God is with them all now, the living and the grieving and the dead.

And I really hope right now that God does exist, because there are a lot of people out there who need more help than humans can give.

The Plaid Adder